[Cassidy]

If we hadnt of signed Ibra Jose would of bought someone in as he wouldnt of gone with no experienced striker. Who is another matter. Whoever he would of had in mind.

The reason I asked who is because I'm not so sure they would have been top. Not many were available in the summer. One of the reasons why we likely went for Ibra in the first place. He was one of the best choices we could have got IMO

 

[Annihilate Now!]

Anyone else impressed with Saint-Etienne? I thought they were excellent.

They were decently organised, pressed very well and were very energetic, but they lacked any sort of quality with the ball I thought.

Ha what was the story with that?
It's been discussed already I'm sure but I can't be arsed checking

It was basically just some slightly large old block, who was wearing chinos and a lanyard, and looked like he just won a raffle to be the physio for the day. He amused the Stretford end greatly in the second half

 

[Laphroaig]

Why didn't Selnæs start?

 

[Reynoldo]

They were decently organised, pressed very well and were very energetic, but they lacked any sort of quality with the ball I thought.



It was basically just some slightly large old block, who was wearing chinos and a lanyard, and looked like he just won a raffle to be the physio for the day. He amused the Stretford end greatly in the second half

Ha cheers I was at the game so laughed along with the stretty mocking him but didn't know why

 

[DavidDeSchmikes]

There's a bit of Fellaini in him too.

I see a combination of Sam Johnstone and Jonjo Shelvey

 

[SCP]

does he like him ??
He may be moving !

Unfortunately yes, it looks since the beggining of his carrer it looks Mou always has some fetiche with this sort of players...

 

[pixel]

- What is Fellaini's role when he plays? He seems to just run around like a confused lost dog. I doubt both Jose and LVG's instructions to him are constantly "just go out and do whatever you feel like, feck it"...so what is he doing? He seemed to spend part of the first half tonight trying to run in behind their defence and get on the end of balls over the top. We had Martial playing and Rashford and Lingard on the bench. We definitely didn't play Fellaini to get him to do this, so what IS he doing?

- We are infuriatingly determined not to score goals. Last season we spent large parts of games deliberately not trying to attack. This season, we attack all the time, but unless we have an open goal, you know we wont score, and even when we do, there's only an at best 50% chance we'll score. Our players seem adamant on faffing around or turning away from the goal, or scooping the ball over the bar, or aiming it at the goalkeeper, or deliberately picking the wrong pass. They'll do everything in their power not score. Half the time when they do it genuinely looks like it happened by accident.

- I've never seen a freekick go into the goal so slowly that I've had time to be furious at what a bad effort it was before realising it was going in

- Why did that one St Etienne player just watch it slowly roll past him and in? It was like that scene from Austin PPowers with the guy waiting for the golf buggy to run him over. Just clear the fecking ball!

- I reckon that ref has constant arguments with his officiating team where he refuses to accept that diving is actually a thing and they all try to convince him it is, but he never listens.

- Fogba

- What I really like to watch innstead of the game, is a clip of a set of fans with their back to the game, nnot watching it, so that I, like them, can not watch the game. Because that's wh people tune into football on TV...so they can not watch it. Thanks BT.

- If there was such thing as an Ian Darke chat-shite-o-metre...it would have exploded at around about the 5th minute. It was relentless. Just whe you thought he couldn't be wrong about anything else or say anything else stupid, AS the coverage is going back to the studio "Well it was the battle of the two Pogba's, and there's no doubt the winner of that was Zlatan Ibrahimovic"...what does this even mean?

- Good spell towards the end of the first half where literally all of our players decided to just feck football off and concentrate on pretending to be ice skating whilst drunk.

Second hallf as better but the first was awful so that wasn't hard. We seemed shocked at St Etienne's ability and audacity to actually kick the football about, despite them being a football team.

You used to be witty and funny. Now its just the same old rehashed points made in the same old rehashed way. Get your act together man!

 

[rpg]

The Old Trafford crossbars wasnt Pogba friend this season. The admin should dismantle it and weld a new one.

 

[ti vu]

We allowed 14 shots at home (although not one on target), I think that tells a lot about our performance.

Not really. It's more about our open approach and how we let our self open in some area in defense. We're solid in set piece situation, just that we can't prevent counter with how much space we opened for St Etienne to exploit.

Performance wise, we did well. Some individual in the defense bailed us out, and we got some luck on the way too. We're definitely the better side and deserve to win the game

They were decently organised, pressed very well and were very energetic, but they lacked any sort of quality with the ball I thought.



It was basically just some slightly large old block, who was wearing chinos and a lanyard, and looked like he just won a raffle to be the physio for the day. He amused the Stretford end greatly in the second half

Yes. They're well disciplined & organized with good work ethnic. Just lack quality all around. Not just on ball such as, winning aerial duel, screening our players, making strong tackling... Anyways don't really want to ask more from opponent for the obvious reason. Entertaining game with great result for us.

 

[Rameses]

Newbie question. Shots on target 21, 7 off target, 8 on target, 6 blocked.

Two of the 8 were goals. What comes under the other shots on target that were not blocked ?

 

[littleman]

Penalty

 

[stu_1992]

Didn't see the game because of work, but good result. Very happy to see Zlatan get his first hat-trick. That first goal seems very questionable though.

 

[Needham]

Three nil is such a cool scoreline, always preferred it to 4-0. There's something boringly non-competition about a four nil. The Einsteins all reach for the word "drubbing" when you get 4. Three goals make them work a bit harder. Doesn't matter how you do it, whether we played well or not: It's a great night's work.

 

[Klopp_De_Klown]

So why do our fans want Ibra benched?

To give him a break to recharge the battries. He is 35.

 

[Mitser]

I thought the scoreline flattered us. Poor team performance but love that we still won 3-0.
In fact didn't think Zlatan was on form tonight but he bangs in a hattrick, how class is that.
Martial was good though, very good.

 

[Treble_Winning]

Zlatan was ridiculous. He makes it look so easy. And some fans want him benched??

I'm sure there will be people saying that his hat trick was no huge achievement because he used to crap on French teams for fun.

Zlatan is a monster. End of story. He is one of the best strikers around. We haven't had a beast of a striker like this since van Persie, and arguably, Zlatan is better than van Persie.

We have a great chance of winning the EL. We need to make it a priority. It would be fantastic to win it. Only a handful of clubs have won both the CL and the EL in their history. Winning it would add to our club's prestige and standing, but more importantly it would guarantee us SEEDED CL qualification + a solid European coefficient which will help us for the next FIVE years. It is winnable and we should be favourites - so we need to get the job done and win it!!

 

[Carolina Red]

In fact didn't think Zlatan was on form tonight but he bangs in a hattrick, how class is that.

He's got that kinda quality about him for sure. More than a few times this year I've been thinking "wow, Ibra is crap today" and then he snags a goal or 2 out of nowhere.

 

[Sultan]

4 standouts.

Referee, Martial, Pogba, and Zlatan (lucky hattrick)

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Newbie question. Shots on target 21, 7 off target, 8 on target, 6 blocked.

Two of the 8 were goals. What comes under the other shots on target that were not blocked ?

Saved by the keeper (defenders block, keepers save)

 

[Virgil]

Overall a poor performance methinks but a tremendous result. I will also refrain from voicing the opinion that decisions are not going in our favour (at least for the rest of this season) as they most certainly did last night.

 

[Ecstatic]

We allowed 14 shots at home (although not one on target), I think that tells a lot about our performance.

Yeah, the midfield has to be fixed. Fellaini was lost.

Anyone else impressed with Saint-Etienne? I thought they were excellent.

1st half: full of energy. Their issue is not new: they don't possess a scorer.
2nd half: they lacked experience as they never took the time to keep the ball and release the pressure. Exhausted at the end.

Good defence. Inexperienced midfield. Disciplined and organized team but without a scorer you can't go very far.

 

[Robertd0803]

Should have scored more but then we miss some gilt edged chances every game it seems. Start was dreadful until we scored and luckily St Etienne didn't seem to know what to do in front of goal. No idea what we were doing at the end of the first half, I was watching on a stream and lost it for a few minutes and though we had someone sent off or injured with the way we were all over the place.

Can't complain about Zlatans hat-trick

Pogba and Herrera in a midfield two does leave us very open at times, thought it during the Watford game and again last night. Would definitely need some cover in a bigger game.

 

[Sarni]

Good performance overall, we were not great in the later stages of the first half but got going properly in the second half and could have won by more than 3. Should not have any problems qualifying to the next round and some decent teams look like they might be out of the tournament soon (Villarreal for sure, maybe Tottenham, Zenit look in danger).

The list of teams who are favourites to go through at this point:

Lyon, Krasnodar, Ajax, Gent, Shakhtar, Genk, Besiktas, Anderlecht, Schalke, Copenhagen, Osmanlispor, Rostov, Roma, Athletic, Fiorentina, Man Utd

Bolded are the teams who are virtually through after their first results. Us and Roma are quite comfortably the strongest teams in there, Tottenham would be joint with both but they'll struggle against Gent IMO. 1-0 away from home is a bad result.

 

[noodlehair]

You used to be witty and funny. Now its just the same old rehashed points made in the same old rehashed way. Get your act together man!

Where as I only ever remember one post from you...which is this one, of you for some reason being a knob.

 

[sincher]

Where as I only ever remember one post from you...which is this one, of you for some reason being a knob.

Not a very funny post noods, get your act together!

 

[red_john]

1st half wasn't the best in fairness. We didn't exactly play bad, we let complacency and lack of concentration creep in. Pogba was the best player on the pitch for me. Him and Martial deserved a goal for their performances.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Good performance overall, we were not great in the later stages of the first half but got going properly in the second half and could have won by more than 3. Should not have any problems qualifying to the next round and some decent teams look like they might be out of the tournament soon (Villarreal for sure, maybe Tottenham, Zenit look in danger).

Yeah, I've read a lot of comments about how crap we were in the first half but we were really only crap for about 15-20 minutes of it. We were fairly dominant otherwise and created some great opportunities/forced their keeper into some decent saves. Second half we were more or less completely dominant, bar some intermittent drunken defending from Bailly.

 

[noodlehair]

1st half wasn't the best in fairness. We didn't exactly play bad, we let complacency and lack of concentration creep in. Pogba was the best player on the pitch for me. Him and Martial deserved a goal for their performances.

I would say Pogba deserved a goal, but, when you can't head an inch perfect cross into the goal unchallenged from 4 yards out, you don't deserve a goal.

It was his best performance since Christmas though, by a very long way.

 

[Annihilate Now!]

I would say Pogba deserved a goal, but, when you can't head an inch perfect cross into the goal unchallenged from 4 yards out, you don't deserve a goal.

It was his best performance since Christmas though, by a very long way.

To be fair though, if we judged our squad on their ability to convert easy chances from 4 yards out, none of our players would ever deserve goals.

 

[GrandJury]

We started the game very poorly and as soon as Jose Mourinho got them into the dressing room and gave them the hairdryer treatment we came out looking like a different side. This has been a consistent problem for United this season of almost being two completely different sides in the first half compared to the second half as can be seen by the number of games we have gone into the half time break having not scored. I am sure that Jose would have been drilling the idea into the heads of the players all week that this wouldn't be an easy game and the players need to take responsibility for some of the dreadful play in the first half.

In the second half Jose made another fantastic substitution by replacing Fellaini (who was supposed to be the physical presence in this side but failed to deliver) with Lingard who I feel was really underrated for his performance. His positional movement and interlink play was great to see and he helped bring another dimension to our attack. I saw on this forum a lot of criticism of Mourinho when he wasn't giving time to Martial but it looks to have rejuvenated him and he has been performing fantastically since. I hope that if/when Jose does this again in the future people will remember Mkhitaryan and Martial and the fact that he knows what he is doing and knows how to get the best out of his players.

I think Jose's aim for this game was to win and not concede and the team has accomplished that. However, he will not be happy with the performance his players showed in the first half. We have the ability to be brilliant but we need to start showing we can be consistently good and in control for entire games rather than just in the second half or for select periods. Pogba was also fantastic and I constantly have to defend him annoyingly from people's opinions who do not watch Manchester United game to game. He bossed that midfield as he has constantly bossed most mid-fields he has played against this season. Zlatan showed why he starts games...because he scores. Simple as that really.

Massive credit to St etienne and having a go at us rather than sitting back and just trying to soak up pressure, I was very impressed with their performance and while they will be disappointed in the result, they can be proud.

Apparently Jose has said he will field a strong in the return leg which I think means he considers it a strong team but it will include players like Rooney etc. I'd be very surprised if he fielded a full strength team when 1 goal would mean they would need to reply with 5 to knock us out and we have the final the following weekend.

 

[Mihai]

Newbie question. Shots on target 21, 7 off target, 8 on target, 6 blocked.

Two of the 8 were goals. What comes under the other shots on target that were not blocked ?

Stopped by their keeper?

 

[diarm]

I was wondering last night, was that Henri Saivet fella the same lad who used to be an absolute genius on football manager?

Thought he played well last night and it's always nice to see where those lads end up!

 

[glazed]

I think that was the least impressive hatrick I ever saw. Yet I find myself wondering if anyone else would have scored it.

 

[Cnaiür urs Skiötha]

First half was awful. Second one was clearly better. Overall we deserved the win.

Watching us Play I sometimes think that our actual squad is worse than the sum of its parts if that makes sense.
Pogba, Martial, Mkhi (and DdG of course) are easily among the best Footballers on the planet right now. The former 2 had some amazing Scenes yesterday
Add some very good players like Mata, Herrera etc. and we should not be too far away from the top Teams.

However, comparing our Performance with Bayern`s on Wednesday the gap is still huge.

I really hope this is just a matter of time until it clicks.

 

[Rameses]

Saved by the keeper (defenders block, keepers save)

Stopped by their keeper?

Thank you.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

I would say Pogba deserved a goal, but, when you can't head an inch perfect cross into the goal unchallenged from 4 yards out, you don't deserve a goal.

It was his best performance since Christmas though, by a very long way.

I thought he was just as good (i.e. very) against Watford.

 

[Rameses]

Yeah, I've read a lot of comments about how crap we were in the first half but we were really only crap for about 15-20 minutes of it.

But that phase was very poor. The midfield disappeared and there was a huge gap between the front line and back. On another day, StE could have easily scored one or two.

 

[Sarni]

Yeah, I've read a lot of comments about how crap we were in the first half but we were really only crap for about 15-20 minutes of it. We were fairly dominant otherwise and created some great opportunities/forced their keeper into some decent saves. Second half we were more or less completely dominant, bar some intermittent drunken defending from Bailly.

We were poor for the first 3-5 minutes and then towards the end of the first half where they should have scored It's like we completely turned off and that 15-20 mintues was a completely different game.

 

[daveoliver91]

Disappointing first half, we should have received 2 goals at least in the first half TBF.
Nevertheless, we managed to keep a clean sheet & to score 3 decent goals.

Hope next week we'll be able to rotate the squad a little bit on these busy days!

 

[Verbalkint]

What was that handball incident about though? Watched the highlights on the new app (works brilliantly on Chromecast btw) and it seemed pretty blatant.